


A Jewel Lost

by Allerleirauh



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Ficlet, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allerleirauh/pseuds/Allerleirauh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steel and Silver are dead. Sapphire seeks ways to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Jewel Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This is prompt No. 93 from lost_spook's 100 prompts list (steel & silver - presumed dead & bad boys).  
> Betaed by sparky955.

_It can’t be._ Her mind searched, patiently, methodically, looking for two well-known presences.

_It can’t be!_ She couldn’t find them, and minute after minute her searching mind raced through the silence and desolation, gaining speed and urgency.

_Can it be?_ Like slow poison, the first hints of suspicion, of considering the impossible, seeped into her mind, its search becoming frantic and chaotic.

***

Sapphire had no idea how much time had passed. She was too tired and too weak to access the information. She didn’t care either. Steel and Silver were dead. They had ceased to exist, had been erased by time, eradicated in an instant. One moment they’d been with her, two comforting presences at her side, steadfast Steel and mischievous Silver, being the poles of her existence, both keeping her grounded and stable. Now they were gone. No, even worse, according to the results of her search they’d never even had existed.

Sapphire fell. Her mind became unhinged. She still didn’t care. Wailing and howling, she filled the silence around her with sounds arising from within herself, shrill and pathetic, like the shrieks of a banshee, but foretelling far worse than simple death. She went on and on, until there were no more sounds left inside of her. With every scream and deep intake of breath afterwards she exchanged some of this nightmare’s silence surrounding her with her screams until the reversal was complete. She was filled and saturated with a deadly quiet while all around her the echoes of her voice danced, endlessly fracturing on every available surface, intermingling and overlapping each other – a cacophony of elemental grief and fury.

Her final hand gesture was impatient. She had enough, and with a thought she was gone. For a while she drifted, ignoring first the requests, then the commands to return to the authorities. Eventually they would send someone after her, so she cut herself off, isolating herself as completely as she could. The authorities didn’t matter; her own existence didn’t matter to her.

For some time nothing mattered, until at one point, the shroud of silence she’d wrapped around herself ceased to be enough; drifting wasn’t enough anymore and she had her first clear thought in eons. She needed help. She needed solace, and she wondered where she could find it.

***

She made a choice where to go, both improbable and improper. The house looked exactly the same as it had all those years ago. The man opening the door at her knocking was Robert Jardine, not the boy, but a grown man now, yet easily recognizable.

“Sapphire!” he exclaimed, the delight as clear on his face as the following frown when he took a closer look.

It made her wonder about her appearance, but still she couldn’t find the energy to care. He ushered her in and took her to the kitchen. She noticed few changes. There were distinctly fewer clocks around, but the otherwise homely atmosphere of the room was still the same.

The two of them sat at the kitchen table, sat there for hours with mugs of tea in their hands while the oven spread its warmth, and a solitary candle between them offered its light, both creating a small shelter of seclusion around them.

She told him of her grief, of Steel and Silver. How she had lost them to foolishness. How their competitive streak had been their untimely and ultimate downfall. She told him a lot about them and about herself, too much by her usual standards, more than the rules allowed. She didn’t care about rules then, yet she didn’t tell him everything, because she cared for him, and because she needed him.

In return he offered her his company and his words and his bed.

She took everything he was willing to give, and for a while that was all and it was enough, her first step back towards sanity. She learned that he had become a writer, and he would read her his stories that spoke of wonders and horror, but happiness, too. That was her second step towards sanity.

***

Time passed and one day she looked at him. They were lying in bed, listening to the first bird calls as the sun shyly rose over the horizon, tinting the room with the first shade of pale grey.

“I need to feel. I need to feel more, and I need to become whole again,” she told him. He looked back, brushing a strand of unruly hair out of her face and simply nodded, showing the same calm acceptance and support he had during the entire time of her stay.

He offered her a whole list of things to do and to see. If her ultimate choice was a surprise to him, he didn’t let her see it, and she didn’t probe his mind to discover.

***

They went to a fair. Looking around herself, she took it all in, the noise and the smells, the taste in the evening’s air as well as the roar of thoughts and emotions surrounding her, pressing against her, almost drowning her. She withstood them, proving to be strong enough. She bathed in the sensations. Just like the silence she had taken inside herself when her pain had been too much to bear; she now filled herself with everything the place and the people had to offer. In its intensity that night was shrill. It was wild and harsh and feral and she laid herself bare to it all, saturating herself.

***

It happened when her experiencing reached its peak. Suddenly two voices broke into her mind, first hesitantly, almost timidly, but seconds later changing to jubilant outcries.

“Sapphire! Where are you? Sapphire! We thought you were dead. Come back to us!” It were Steel’s and Silver’s voices, chorusing and interrupting each other, leaping at her mind like playful and eager waves on a beach, finally eroding the last walls she’d pulled up around herself. Yet, they couldn’t reach her, not without her initiative.

She couldn’t comprehend their existence. Her mind was overwhelmed by questions as to the why and how and a sudden guilt for not looking longer for them, the last thought suddenly opening a precipice in front of her. She shook herself and stepped over it. She wouldn’t dwell on those questions, but focused on her newly rediscovered emotions.

She burned with impatience and with hunger to return to them, yet she managed to say goodbye to Robert first. It was inadequate, just a kiss to the cheek, a ‘thank you’ and a rushed farewell. But it couldn’t be more, her mind already flying out towards her other halves.

***

In the end, she took them both, and she took them both back. She made the mental connection between all three of them and with Steel to her right and Silver to her left she finally brought them back into balance, for just like the two were the poles of her existence, she was the scale to reach equilibrium.

Later she took them again, laying claim to them in their human form, placing her marks on them in body and mind, declaring and demanding her privileges with a passion she’d neither shown before, nor felt.

At last she was whole again, and sated, and tired, and she slept.

 


End file.
